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Beware that many masters programs from top schools are degree mills and the undergrads who went there know this and actively loathe them (based on their experience sharing classes with them). At least for my particular school. I remember helping out with resume screening at a job fair and we would sort everyone who went to that masters program to the bottom of the pile. A handful of them turned out to be good candidates on second pass, but it sucks that they probably would've had a better chance just leaving off their masters.

> Beware that many masters programs from top schools are degree mills and the undergrads who went there know this and actively loathe them (based on their experience sharing classes with them).

Thank you for mentioning this. So many people don’t realize that masters programs can be fairly worthless even from elite schools.

The masters ranking does matter if you’re international

How so?

For multiple reasons (scarce supply and large demand of visas, unfair stereotypes, etc) international hires need more objective criteria to stand out, even if it's just window dressing

Salary suffered because of my reluctance to even compete for those jobs.

The article talks about how to gain Financial Independence as a software engineer. Choosing to not work at FANG or unicorn co's, will severely limit your ability to achieve FI. Whether you like it or not, people do make judgements off of where you went to school.

I've had several managers at FANG talk about how they have a bias towards top 10 schools, one even admitted that the candidates don't seem that different but he still has this bias.

The biggest boost in your career earnings came from working at (1) financial companies and (2) working at FAANG. I don't think you have enough data to say that your area of focus is what to lead to this, and I personally think it is wrong.

You're welcome to look at the data on levels.fyi

It's pretty clear that at this point SWE's on average far-out earn HWE's. Not to mention the fact that there are a lot more open headcount for SWE's than for HWE's at the top-paying companies.

This is what I found frustrating about embedded and computer architecture jobs. Your knowledge base is difficult to attain and many jobs require you to disrupt your life by jumping on a plane and fly to $country_of_manufacture to diagnose issues while fighting jet lag. For that you’re rewarded less pay than your software engineering peers. It’s not worth it unless you greatly prefer to work closer to the metal.

My masters did nothing for me. I still make under $100k. What a waste of time.